GOP up-and-comers seize CPAC spotlight

In 2012, Cruz received a boost from in a difficult Texas primary from CPAC. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

The ACU’s catch-a-rising-star efforts aren’t merely the haphazard work of an organization trying to keep up with a Republican trend. The group has issued ratings scorecards for state legislators for years now, tracking their adherence to conservative ideology. When senior staffers with the group draft lists of state and local leaders to promote, ACU Chairman Al Cardenas ultimately approves every selection.

It’s a plain reality of modern politics that in the age of online and wall-to-wall television news coverage, the exposure an event like CPAC brings is of only marginal benefit to figures who already have national profiles. So for CPAC to serve a really productive purpose for the Republican coalition, it has to go beyond promoting the stars it has already helped create — Rubio and Cruz, for example — and actually go out to find new ones.

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The emphasis on beyond-the-Potomac CPAC guests also mirrors a broader trend within the Republican Party, of looking outside Washington for political talent and policy leadership.

With the federal government gridlocked and dozens of junior members of Congress more or less indistinguishable from each other, the GOP has increasingly scoured state capitals — as well as local offices and the private sector — for stories of functional conservative leadership.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, struck that chord in his own CPAC address Wednesday, name-checking fellow GOP state executives in Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan to make the case that the right has policy solutions to offer.

“What you see in Washington is people who only want to talk,” Christie said. “Leadership is about getting something done and making government work.”

Jill Bader of the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national group that funds state-level GOP candidates, called the ACU gathering a valuable political platform for those officials — many of whom would otherwise fly below the Beltway’s political radar.

“CPAC has been a great vehicle for the RSLC to introduce our strong bench of state-level, diverse leadership who are leading the conservative comeback across America,” Bader said. “We think CPAC’s a wonderful opportunity for us to highlight these leaders.”

Among CPAC alumni in the states, the annual conference — and its occasional satellite conferences in the states — is something of a class reunion for fresh-faced conservatives looking to participate in a larger community and start building out a network of allies, supporters and donors for the future.

Hall, an Oklahoma state representative who first won elected office as a college student in 2010, said she attended the national CPAC conference last year before the ACU designated her a conservative up-and-comer ahead of a regional CPAC event in St. Louis.

“The regional event, I saw as an opportunity to get some face time with people regionally, but also to network with other conservatives, whether they’re from Oklahoma or Kansas or Arkansas or Missouri,” Hall said, adding that the big national conference had other highlights as well.

“When I was in D.C., I had the opportunity to meet Eric Metaxas,” she said, referring to the 2013 CPAC speaker and biographer of William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “That was a neat opportunity.”